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Skulltrail - XFX GTX 280 XXX 3-Way SLi /4870X2 CFx

helmutcheese

helmutcheese

helmutcheese

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PLEASE NO flaming or off topic BS, TY :)

On 1 hand its 3 Cores V 4 Cores, on the other hand the 4 Cores are cheaper to buy so its swings and roundabouts.


I did not want leave this bare so will paste in the conclusion but please read entire review before inputting, TY :)




QUOTED :


" Conclusion
While people will compare the ultra high end ATI configuration against Nvidia's SLIx3 this is not really the point of this article. We wanted to follow up our earlier Skulltrail launch article with a look at how the platform is fairing 7 months later. As Nvidia decided to allow Skulltrail compatibility with 3 cards in SLI we felt it was the perfect time to do so.

If you have read this article, you will have seen that the XFX GTX 280 XXX generally comes out on top. Obviously the 280 cores are superior to the 4870's, however I still feel the Skulltrail board has some minor issues with the ATI cards, something we noticed at launch with the last Radeon series.

The problems we experienced with Catalyst driver installation, black screens and signals being lost as well as a few BSOD's on reboot would make me feel, that although some of these issues are down to the beta drivers, that the two platforms are perhaps still not fully working as they should, to be fair however, generally the 4870 X2's worked well with Skulltrail. Obviously some of the performance blame will be placed at Skulltrail's feet, after all its a specialist low volume system and in the grand scheme of things, ATI will certainly not be putting much focus into optimising for it.

Nvidia on the other hand have surprised me with their new PhysX drivers, because apart from one hard lock when switching "on" 3x SLI in the driver on the first reboot, the whole experience has been pain free and a joy to use. I would strongly recommend however if you are fortunate enough to have access to this system that you update immediately to the 1140 bios (64 bit OS version here) because it fixes some incompatibility issues with the 280 cards as well as providing numerous other bug fixes. There is also now support for half ratio capable processors. "




http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=609
 
Insane frame rates, surprised how well 3x 280 cores do against 4x 4870 cores but I guess thats due to the bugs and the extra power the 280 cores have anyway, having a system like that you would not need to upgrade for years lol.
 
willhub said:
Insane frame rates, surprised how well 3x 280 cores do against 4x 4870 cores but I guess thats due to the bugs and the extra power the 280 cores have anyway, having a system like that you would not need to upgrade for years lol.
Click to expand...

Sadly probably not true...

I've run some Xtreme rigs in the past & within a year the mainstream catches up.........it's very annoying :(



But anyway.....killer rigs from both the ATI & nvidia solutions!!
 
I'm pretty sure i've read all the article, was there anything about power consumption mentioned in there? Would be interesting to see how much power was drawn by both sides to acheive those frame rates.
 
I get dizzy thinking about how much all that hardware costs.

EDIT:

Love the Crysis benchies :p
 
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Not really suprised the GTX 280 was way better as theres high diminishing returns with more cards and the GTX is a fair bit better than a single 4870 core after all.
 
i went with the 4870 X2 because GTX280 SLI was not supported on skulltrail board.

and now they go and enable it.

Im having issues with my 4870x2, i only bought one because of the high price of them atm.

If i cant get my isssues sorted i may have to try the SLI out on my skulltrail.
 
helmutcheese said:
The 3 Nvidia cards in SLI would still really only have use of 1GB correct and the same for the 2 ATI's Crossfire set up having use of only 2GB ?.
Click to expand...

The nVidia's will use 1GB and the ATI's will use 1GB as far as I know?

The 4870x2 only says 2GB because its two 1GB cards in crossfire. Same as 9800GX2 says its 1GB but its really 512mb.
 
I would venture to suggest that another reason for the 280s performing better than the 4870x2s in this particular board is down to the fact it only supports the PCI-E 1.1 standard, which would hamper the 4870x2s more than the 280s (4 gpus shared between slots vs 3 GPUs, each with it's own slot). When in SLI/Crossfire, multi GPU cards do not perform to their optimal level in the Skulltrail. The 9800GX2 in Quad was significantly slower in the ST than in a 790i board.

Also, with 2 card setups, it makes a difference which slots one installs the cards in. Using the top two slots gives superior performance to the logical choice of the 1st and 3rd, having only skimmed through the review, I'm not certain if they specify which ones they used for the ATI cards, though I would guess it may have been the latter.

In any case, they've certainly kept this news quiet, been googling like mad for the last month trying to establish if the Skulltrail even supports dual 280s yet, let alone three.
 
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balth_dire said:
I would venture to suggest that another reason for the 280s performing better than the 4870x2s in this particular board is down to the fact it only supports the PCI-E 1.1 standard, which would hamper the 4870x2s more than the 280s (4 gpus shared between slots vs 3 GPUs, each with it's own slot). When in SLI/Crossfire, multi GPU cards do not perform to their optimal level in the Skulltrail. The 9800GX2 in Quad was significantly slower in the ST than in a 790i board.
Click to expand...

Agreed, I would also like to see what stock 280's would do against the stock ATI cards they used. Especially when they do boast that:

Obviously the 280 cores are superior to the 4870's, however I still feel the Skulltrail board has some minor issues with the ATI cards, something we noticed at launch with the last Radeon series.
Click to expand...

They then go on to slate the driver installation of the ATI drivers. The only time they say anything bad about the Nvidia cards are when they mention the price, and the possibly increase in temperature.

I know Im an ATI fan-boy, but this article seemed a bit one-sided tbh.
 
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